Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “And we never guessed it!” said he. “That’s why he went in for this sort of double camera, and rigged it up to take both kinds of shot in quick succession. It’s the cleverest thing I ever heard of in my life.”

  He spoke as if it were only clever! Phillida stared at it and him without a word.

  “The cleverest part is the way you aim. I do believe he relied altogether on that spot about the middle of the focussing screen. I’ve been trying it against the window, and where that spot comes the pistol’s pointing every time. It’s a fixed focus, about ten to fifteen feet, I fancy, and the spot isn’t quite in the middle of the screen, but just enough to the left to allow. I don’t quite see how the one bulb works everything, but these springs and things are a bit confusing. We shan’t understand everything till we take it to pieces.”

  “You mean the police won’t!” said Phillida, bitterly.

  “The police! I never thought of them.”

  “What do you mean to do with this — this infernal machine?” the girl asked, her voice breaking over the perfectly applicable term.

  “What do you mean to do with — the writing?” demanded Pocket in his turn.

  “Burn it! I’ve asked for a fire in my room; it’s locked away meanwhile.”

  “Well, this is yours, too,” said Pocket, deliberately, “to do what you like with as well.”

  “They wouldn’t think so!”

  “They’ll never know.”

  Phillida shook her head, and not without some scorn. “You couldn’t keep it to yourself,” she said. “You would have to tell.”

  “Well, but not everybody,” said poor Pocket. “Only my father, if you like!” he added, valiantly.

  “Mr. Upton would feel bound to tell.”

  “I don’t see that. Didn’t you hear what he said about a man’s secrets dying with him?”

  “He’s so kind! He says that; he said it again to me; but this is the mystery of the day. It’ll be the talk for months, if not years. And as yet only you and I, in all the world, have found it out!”

  She looked at him so wistfully, so sweetly and sadly and confidentially, that he would have been either more or less than human boy if he had failed to see her heart’s desire, and how it was still in his power to save her the supreme humiliation and distress of sharing their secret with the world. He made up his mind on the spot; and yet it was a mind that looked both ways at every turn of affairs, and even then he saw what he was going to lose. Fred and Horace would not sit nearly so spellbound as they might have done, would probably back their penetration of the mystery against his! There would be no boasting about it in front of the hall fire at school, no breathing it even to Smith minor out for a walk; no adventure to recount all his days; and Pocket was one to whom the salt of an adventure would always be its subsequent recital. But he could “play the game” as well as Horace himself, when he happened to have no doubt as to the game to play. And now he had none whatever.

  “Phillida, if you wish it, I’ll never breathe a syllable of all this to a single soul on earth, I don’t care who they are, or what they do to me!”

  He wanted them to put him on the rack that moment.

  “Oh, Tony, do you mean it?”

  Her eyes had filled.

  “Of course I mean it! I’ll swear it more solemnly than I’ve ever sworn anything in my life so far.”

  “No, no! Your word’s enough. Don’t I know what that’s worth, after this terrible week?”

  And she cried again at its hideous memories, so that Pocket turned away and put the camera together again, and wrapped it up in her waterproof, so that he might not see her tears.

  “I’ll never breathe a single word to a single soul,” he vowed, “except yourself.”

  She caught at that through her tears. He could talk to her about it, always, as much as ever he liked; it would be a bond between them all their lives. And not until she said it, to be just to Pocket, did he think of a reward or look beyond those days.

  But what were they to do with a stereoscopic camera containing an automatic pistol? It was not to be burnt in a grate like a sheaf of MS. They thought about it for some time with anxious faces; for it was getting on towards evening now, though the sun was out again, and it was lighter than the early afternoon; but Mr. Upton might be back any minute. It was Phillida who at last said she knew. She would not tell him what she meant to do; but she put on her waterproof again, little as it was wanted now, and the camera under it as before; and together they sallied forth into the noisy and crowded Strand.

  Pocket did not know where he was, and Phillida would not tell him where she was going, neither could he question her in that alarming throng. He felt a frightful sense of guilt and danger, not so much to himself as to her, with that lethal weapon concealed about her; every man who looked at them was a detective in his eyes, and past the policemen at the corners he wanted to run. But they gained the middle of Waterloo Bridge undetected and ensconced themselves in a recess without creating a sensation.

  “Now, then,” said Phillida, “will you focus Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, or shall I?”

  There they were before them against the sunset, the long lithe bridge, the stately towers. But Pocket could not see Phillida’s drift until she aimed herself, and, aiming, let the square black box slip clean through her fingers into the depths of the river from which she had only retrieved it a couple of hours before, as a body is committed to the deep.

  She bewailed her stupidity; he had the wit to echo her then, and in a loud voice, that any eye-witness or passer-by might be struck with the genuine severity of their loss. But there had been no eye-witness who thought it worth while to rally them on the occurrence, and the busy townsfolk hastening past were all too much engrossed in their own affairs to take any interest in those of the boy and girl who seemed themselves in something of a hurry to get back to the Strand.

  And in the Strand the first thing they saw was a yellow poster bearing but four words in enormous black letters: —

  CHELSEA INQUEST

  CAMERA CLUE!

  Phillida slipped her hand within Pocket’s arm. Pocket was man enough to press it to his side.

  THE END

  FATHERS OF MEN

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I. BEHIND THE SCENES

  CHAPTER II. CHANGE AND CHANCE

  CHAPTER III. VERY RAW MATERIAL

  CHAPTER IV. SETTLING IN

  CHAPTER V. NICKNAMES

  CHAPTER VI. BOY TO BOY

  CHAPTER VII. REASSURANCE

  CHAPTER VIII. LIKES AND DISLIKES

  CHAPTER IX. CORAM POPULO

  CHAPTER X. ELEGIACS

  CHAPTER XI. A MERRY CHRISTMAS

  CHAPTER XII. THE NEW YEAR

  CHAPTER XIII. THE HAUNTED HOUSE

  CHAPTER XIV. “SUMMER-TERM”

  CHAPTER XV. SPRAWSON’S MASTERPIECE

  CHAPTER XVI. SIMILIA SIMILIBUS

  CHAPTER XVII. THE FUN OF THE FAIR

  CHAPTER XVIII. DARK HORSES

  CHAPTER XIX. FAME AND FORTUNE

  CHAPTER XX. THE EVE OF OFFICE

  CHAPTER XXI. OUT OF FORM

  CHAPTER XXII. THE OLD BOYS’ MATCH

  CHAPTER XXIII. INTERLUDE IN A STUDY

  CHAPTER XXIV. THE SECOND MORNING’S PLAY

  CHAPTER XXV. INTERLUDE IN THE WOOD

  CHAPTER XXVI. CLOSE OF PLAY

  CHAPTER XXVII. THE EXTREME PENALTY

  CHAPTER XXVIII. “LIKE LUCIFER”

  CHAPTER XXIX. CHIPS AND JAN

  CHAPTER XXX. HIS LAST FLING

  CHAPTER XXXI. VALE

  An early title page

  CHAPTER I. BEHIND THE SCENES

  The two new boys in Heriot’s house had been suitably entertained at his table, and afterwards in his study with bound volumes of Punch. Incidentally they had been encouraged to talk, with the result that one boy had talked too much, while the other shut a stubborn mouth tighter than before. The babbler displayed an exuberant knowledge
of contemporary cricket, a more conscious sense of humour, and other little qualities which told their tale. He opened the door for Miss Heriot after dinner, and even thanked her for the evening when it came to an end. His companion, on the other hand, after brooding over Leech and Tenniel with a sombre eye, beat a boorish retreat without a word.

  Heriot saw the pair to the boys’ part of the house. He was filling his pipe when he returned to the medley of books, papers, photographic appliances, foxes’ masks, alpen-stocks and venerable oak, that made his study a little room in which it was difficult to sit down and impossible to lounge. His sister, perched upon a coffin-stool, was busy mounting photographs at a worm-eaten bureau.

  “How I hate our rule that a man mayn’t smoke before a boy!” exclaimed Heriot, emitting a grateful cloud. “And how I wish we didn’t have the new boys on our hands a whole day before the rest!”

  “I should have thought there was a good deal to be said for that,” remarked his sister, intent upon her task.

  “You mean from the boys’ point of view?”

  “Exactly. It must be such a plunge for them as it is, poor things.”

  “It’s the greatest plunge in life,” Heriot vehemently agreed. “But here we don’t let them make it; we think it kinder to put them in an empty bath, and then turn on the cold tap — after first warming them at our own fireside! It’s always a relief to me when these evenings are over. The boys are never themselves, and I don’t think I’m much better than the boys. We begin by getting a false impression of each other.”

  Heriot picked his way among his old oak things as he spoke; but at every turn he had a narrow eye upon his sister. He was a lanky man, many years her senior; his beard had grown grey, and his shoulders round, in his profession. A restless energy marked all his movements, and was traceable in the very obstacles to his present perambulations; they were the spoils of the inveterate wanderer from the beaten track, who wanders with open hand and eye. Spectacles in steel rims twinkled at each alert turn of the grizzled head; and the look through the spectacles, always quick and keen, was kindly rather than kind, and just rather than compassionate.

  “I liked Carpenter,” said Miss Heriot, as she dried a dripping print between sheets of blotting-paper.

  “I like all boys until I have reason to dislike them.”

  “Carpenter had something to say for himself.”

  “There’s far more character in Rutter.”

  “He never opened his mouth.”

  “It’s his mouth I go by, as much as anything.”

  Miss Heriot coated the back of the print with starch, and laid it dexterously in its place. A sheet of foolscap and her handkerchief — an almost unfeminine handkerchief — did the rest. And still she said no more.

  “You didn’t think much of Rutter, Milly?”

  “I thought he had a bad accent and — —”

  “Go on.”

  “Well — to be frank — worse manners!”

  “Milly, you are right, and I’m not sure that I oughtn’t to be frank with you. Let the next print wait a minute. I like you to see something of the fellows in my house; it’s only right that you should know something about them first. I’ve a great mind to tell you what I don’t intend another soul in the place to know.”

  Heriot had planted himself in British attitude, heels to the fender.

  Miss Heriot turned round on her stool. She was as like her brother as a woman still young can be like a rather elderly man; her hair was fair, and she had not come to spectacles; but her eyes were as keen and kindly as his own, her whole countenance as sensible and shrewd.

  “You can trust me, Bob,” she said.

  “I know I can,” he answered, pipe in hand. “That’s why I’m going to tell you what neither boy nor man shall learn through me. What type of lad does this poor Rutter suggest to your mind?”

  There was a pause.

  “I hardly like to say.”

  “But I want to know.”

  “Well — then — I’m sure I couldn’t tell you why — but he struck me as more like a lad from the stables than anything else.”

  “What on earth makes you think that?” Heriot spoke quite sharply in his plain displeasure and surprise.

  “I said I couldn’t tell you, Bob. I suppose it was a general association of ideas. He had his hat on, for one thing, when I saw him first; and it was far too large for him, and crammed down almost to those dreadful ears! I never saw any boy outside a stable-yard wear his hat like that. Then your hunting was the one thing that seemed to interest him in the least. And I certainly thought he called a horse a ‘hoss’!”

  “So he put you in mind of a stable-boy, did he?”

  “Well, not exactly at the time, but he really does the more I think about him.”

  “That’s very clever of you, Milly — because it’s just what he is.”

  Heriot’s open windows were flush with the street, and passing footfalls sounded loud in his room; but at the moment there were none; and a clock ticked officiously on the chimneypiece while the man with his back to it met his sister’s eyes.

  “Of course you don’t mean it literally?”

  “Literally.”

  “I thought his grandfather was a country parson?”

  “A rural dean, my dear; but the boy’s father was a coachman, and the boy himself was brought up in the stables until six months ago.”

  “The father’s dead, then?”

  “He died in the spring. His wife has been dead fourteen years. It’s a very old story. She ran away with the groom.”

  “But her people have taken an interest in the boy?”

  “Never set eyes on him till his father died.”

  “Then how can he know enough to come here?”

  Heriot smiled as he pulled at his pipe. He had the air of a man who has told the worst. His sister had taken it as he hoped she would; her face and voice betokened just that kind of interest in the case which he already felt strongly. It was a sympathetic interest, but that was all. There was nothing sentimental about either of the Heriots; they could discuss most things frankly on their merits; the school itself was no exception to the rule. It was wife and child to Robert Heriot — the school of his manhood — the vineyard in which he had laboured lovingly for thirty years. But still he could smile as he smoked his pipe.

  “Our standard is within the reach of most,” he said; “there are those who would tell you it’s the scorn of the scholastic world. We don’t go in for making scholars. We go in for making men. Give us the raw material of a man, and we won’t reject it because it doesn’t know the Greek alphabet — no, not even if it was fifteen on its last birthday! That’s our system, and I support it through thick and thin; but it lays us open to worse types than escaped stable-boys.”

  “This boy doesn’t look fifteen.”

  “Nor is he — quite — much less the type I had in mind. He has a head on his shoulders, and something in it too. It appears that the vicar where he came from took an interest in the lad, and got him on as far as Cæsar and Euclid for pure love.”

  “That speaks well for the lad,” put in Miss Heriot, impartially.

  “I must say that it appealed to me. Then he’s had a tutor for the last six months; and neither tutor nor vicar has a serious word to say against his character. The tutor, moreover, is a friend of Arthur Drysdale’s, who was captain of this house when I took it over, and the best I ever had. That’s what brought them to me. The boy should take quite a good place. I should be very glad to have him in my own form, to see what they’ve taught him between them. I confess I’m interested in him; his mother was a lady; but you may almost say he never saw her in his life. Yet it’s the mother who counts in the being of a boy. Has the gentle blood been hopelessly poisoned by the stink of the stables, or is it going to triumph and run clean and sweet? It’s a big question, Milly, and it’s not the only one involved.”

  Heriot had propounded it with waving pipe that required another match when he w
as done; through the mountain tan upon his face, and in the eager eyes behind the glasses, shone the zeal of the expert to whom boys are dearer than men or women. The man is rare; rarer still the woman who can even understand him; but here in this little room of books and antique lumber, you had the pair.

  “I’m glad you told me,” said Miss Heriot, at length. “I fear I should have been prejudiced if you had not.”

  “My one excuse for telling you,” was the grave rejoinder. “No one else shall ever know through me; not even Mr. Thrale, unless some special reason should arise. The boy shall have every chance. He doesn’t even know I know myself, and I don’t want him ever to suspect. It’s quite a problem, for I must keep an eye on him more than on most; yet I daren’t be down on him, and I daren’t stand up for him; he must sink or swim for himself.”

  “I’m afraid he’ll have a bad time,” said Miss Heriot, picking a print from the water and blotting it as before. Her brother had seated himself at another bureau to write his letters.

  “I don’t mind betting Carpenter has a worse,” he rejoined without looking up.

  “But he’s so enthusiastic about everything?”

  “That’s a quality we appreciate; boys don’t, unless there’s prowess behind it. Carpenter talks cricket like a Lillywhite, but he doesn’t look a cricketer. Rutter doesn’t talk about it, but his tutor says he’s a bit of a bowler. Carpenter beams because he’s got to his public school at last. He has illusions to lose. Rutter knows nothing about us, and probably cares less; he’s here under protest, you can see it in his face, and the chances are all in favour of his being pleasantly disappointed.”

  Heriot’s quill was squeaking as he spoke, for he was a man with the faculty of doing and even thinking of more than one thing at a time; but though his sister continued mounting photographs in her album with extreme care, her mind was full of the two young boys who had come that night to live under their roof for good or ill. She wondered whether her brother was right in his ready estimate of their respective characters. She knew him for the expert that he was; these were not the first boys that she had heard him sum up as confidently on as brief an acquaintance; and though her knowledge had its obvious limitations, she had never known him wrong. He had a wonderfully fair mind. And yet the boy of action, in whom it was possible to stimulate thought, would always be nearer his heart than the thoughtful boy who might need goading into physical activity. She could not help feeling that he was prepared to take an unsympathetic view of the boy who had struck her as having more in him than most small boys; it was no less plain that his romantic history and previous disadvantages had already rendered the other newcomer an object of sympathetic interest in the house-master’s eyes. The material was new as well as raw, and so doubly welcome to the workman’s hand. Yet the workman’s sister, who had so much of his own force and fairness in her nature, felt that she could never like a sulky lout, however cruel the circumstances which had combined to make him one.